Sexual Harassment In the Academy: An Anonymous Crowdsourced Survey. By The Professor Is In (Karen Kelsky, Ph.D.; www.theprofessorisin.com @theprofessorisin)

Created Nov. 30, 2017. This is an open-source survey to gather anonymous stories of sexual harassment in academia/higher ed/college/university/advanced research settings (NOT K-12 or high school or other educational contexts).

1) ***YOUR ANSWERS WILL BE PUBLIC! PLEASE DON'T ENTER ANY RESPONSE ON THIS FORM THAT YOU DO NOT WISH TO BE PUBLIC! THEY WILL BE AUTOMATICALLY ENTERED ON A SPREADSHEET THAT IS PUBLIC

THE PURPOSE OF THIS SURVEY AND ASSOCIATED SPREADSHEET IS TO MAKE ANONYMOUS PERSONAL STORIES PUBLICLY AVAILABLE TO GIVE A SENSE OF THE SCALE OF INCIDENTS AND THEIR RECURRING PATTERNS.***

2) I will delete entries that appear to be from trolls or counter to the spirit of this project.

3) While I am greatly sympathetic to sexual predation in all professional settings, and want it to be exposed, PLEASE DON'T REPORT STORIES FROM HIGH SCHOOL OR ANY K-12 SETTINGS HERE. My audience and my goal is to try to the degree possible to identify patterns of harassment and harm in HIGHER ED settings -- college, university, academic research labs, research institutions, scholarly conferences and the like, targeting people who have or are seeking advanced degrees such as Ph.D., MA, MFA, Ed.D, J.D., and so on. I hope that others will do a similar project for other levels of schooling.

4) My goal is to allow victims to know they are not alone, and to raise awareness about this scourge in academic settings. Please don't participate if you don't wish to have your anonymous story visible to others. I fully support your right and desire to NOT share your story here if you prefer not to.

I will be discussing the content of this survey on my blog, The Professor Is In, and on my Professor Is In FB and Twitter accounts, and possibly in a Chronicle of Higher Education column, but have no plans to use it in any other way. I make it available for research projects only with permission; anyone seeking to use this material in research, please email me at the email address below. [Update 1/13/18: after going viral, the survey has been featured in the Wall Street Journal, The Guardian, Fortune, Buzzfeed, Jezebel, and other media outlets.]

5) Any cels marked [Removed] or [Redacted] represent content that the contributor requested remain confidential when filling in the form, upon realizing that all content goes automatically to a public spreadsheet. I am monitoring for this several times a day, and would appreciate alerts by email if you see content that needs to be removed.

6) I leave the definition of "Sexual Harassment" open; you may share anything that you feel merits inclusion here. My goal here is to make visible the unacknowledged scope and scale of the problem of sexual harassment in academic settings in the aggregate - with complete anonymity for all who participate. I will make no effort to use this information for any purpose except to increase public awareness on my blog. I will make no effort to identify the contributors or the actors in their stories in any way.

7) Please exercise caution and restraint in sharing stories that are not your own. While I appreciate the impulse to make incidents visible, you may further victimize the victim by giving details that are identifiable. Do NOT use identifiers of race, ethnicity, sexual orientation, etc. for anyone other than yourself, as in the tiny disciplinary and departmental worlds that most of us inhabit, these may serve to identify the victim.

8) Any names will be XX-ed out of this publicly available document. However, if you wish for me to know your name or the name of the harasser, or have a personal request with regard to the information, please email me privately at gettenure@gmail.com. Many have done so, and I hold that information in total and complete confidentiality. Those who do say have consistently said that it was cathartic to name the perpetrator, even if it is just privately, to me. My list currently includes 123 names; I will potentially put people in touch who are victims of the same predator.

Thank you for participating; feel free to share with your networks.

What Was Your Status When the Incident(s) Happened?

Your answer

What Was the Status of the Perpetrator(s) (Particularly, relative to you)?

Your answer

What Was the Gender of the Harasser?

Woman

Man

Non-Binary

Unsure (if harassment was anonymous, for example)

Various incidents with people of different genders

Other:

What Type of Institution Was It?

Elite Institution/Ivy League

Other R1

Small Liberal Arts College

R2

Regional Teaching College

Other Research Agency

Other Type of School

More Than One Institution (feel free to elaborate in "Comments")

(Optional) What Was The Name of the Institution(s)

Your answer

Your Field/Discipline

Your answer

Institutional Responses to the Harassment (If Any)

Your answer

Institutional/Career Consequences for the Harasser (If Any)

Your answer

The Impact of the Harassment on Your Career

Your answer

The Impact of the Harassment on Your Mental Health

Your answer

The Impact of the Harassment on Your Life Choices/Trajectory

Your answer

Other Comments You'd Like to Add (If you'd like me to know your name or the name of the perpetrator, please email me privately at gettenure@gmail.com. The purpose of this survey is to gather anonymous information to give a sense of scale. As always, I will publish no information without explicit permission and extensive prior discussion)